Your View: Will we ever know the truth about Benghazi?

Friday

Feb 8, 2013 at 12:01 AM

Both James Jay Carofano and Jim Cotrill make accurate points about accountability for the terrorist attack on our facilities in Benghazi, Libya ("Pro&Con: Will Hillary Clinton's political hopes be affected by Benghazi?" Feb. 2).

LEE NASON

Both James Jay Carofano and Jim Cotrill make accurate points about accountability for the terrorist attack on our facilities in Benghazi, Libya ("Pro&Con: Will Hillary Clinton's political hopes be affected by Benghazi?" Feb. 2).

There were poor decisions made regarding the security of our outposts in the city but that is par for the course in government circles. Additionally, the administration's repeated attempts, explicitly by Susan Rice and Jay Carney and implicitly by others, to write off the incident as a regrettable accident triggered by an irreverent video misrepresented the situation significantly. But there is nothing new about politicians misrepresenting information while they are in campaign mode — it seems clear that someone in the administration or part of the Obama re-election campaign did not want to admit that terrorists had indeed successfully attacked us on American soil on the anniversary of 9/11 — especially after President Bush had so often bragged about his spotless record preventing terrorism on American soil during his re-election campaign. And, it appears that no one is being held accountable for the poor decision-making or misstatements.

On the other hand, it is also true that most voters will not pay attention to the issue — there are too many facts and accusations to keep track of and most sensible people will not spend very much time figuring out who is telling the truth, who is genuinely outraged, who is feigning ignorance, etc. Anyway, Hillary and Obama are so cool.

Though the writers were addressing a specific question, what I think should be the most damaging issue for the administration's handling of the incident is: Why did we not send a rescue mission to Benghazi during the six to nine hours that our outposts were under attack?

The Accountability Review Board Report, initiated by Secretary Clinton, blithely stated that "The Board members believe every possible effort was made to rescue and recover Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith. The interagency response was timely and appropriate, but there simply was not enough time for armed U.S. military assets to have made a difference." While true, this assessment of the rescue efforts ignores the deaths of Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, the two Americans who were killed many hours later in the CIA safe house.

Various state department and administration staff were well aware of the attack from the moment it started. The safe house staff had repeatedly requested rescue. Woods and Doherty were murdered six to nine hours after the attack had started. Our large, well-equipped naval/air bases at Sigonella, Sicily, and Rota, Spain, are well within an hour or two flight time to Benghazi. And a rescue team might easily have been scrambled from either base in less than an hour.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta avoided trying to cover up the situation with such an obvious misdirection and said merely that the U.S. military did not get involved because officials did not have enough information about what was going on. At a Pentagon news briefing, Panetta said there was no "real-time information" to be able to act on, even though the U.S. military was prepared to do so. "You don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on," Panetta said. "(We) felt we could not put forces at risk in that situation."

When critics pointed out that we had drones filming the events overhead, Panetta's staff said that the photos did not provide enough information on which to base a decision.

Worse than this lame response, we know the staff at the CIA safe house were in constant communication and could easily have provided any information that Panetta wanted about the details of the attack.

Panetta might be a cowardly liar — U.S. military forces frequently venture into ambiguous situations to save their fellow servicemen and women. Alternatively he might be "covering up" for an administration that had decided not to wake the president in the wee hours of the morning before a major campaign event in order to get his authorization to send military aid across an international border. Or perhaps Panetta (and State Department staff) simply hoped the whole incident would disappear in the mire of misdirection, accusation and defense — and not mar the political campaign.

We are unlikely ever to find out exactly why a rescue mission was never sent. And that is a shame, since it appears to me that someone is guilty of negligent homicide.